Monday, July 21, 2003

Low-volume flush toilets are crap!

My dad has just renovated his house. New siding, and a completely new kitchen and bathroom. It looks fantastic, as new and shiny things do. But when shopping for a new toilet (the old one was yellow and just doesn't fit the new colour scheme), the problem of selecting one came up. It's not like you can just go into the store and ask to have one of them hooked up so you can take a test-dump.

And it's not even simply about comfort. (I think I would sit on a prospective toilet for a good 15 minutes and see if my legs go to sleep.) While seat contours are certainly an important qualities to look for in a toilet, there is also the question of LPF (litres per flush).

Traditional toilets would use as much as 20 or 30 litres of water per flush, but recently, environmentalists and hippies have been complaining that too often everything is going down on the first try. They have lobbied government and toilet manufacturerers to produce toilets that use less water. Some use as little as 7 litres per flush. While this may be enough to make a number 1 go away, sometimes it's just not sufficient for a number 2.

I wanted to help out my dad, so my brother and I investigated this problem further. We found an extremely helpful website called Toiletology.com that answered all our questions and then some.

Turns out it is a widely-held opinion that the Toto Ultramax model is the best toilet out there today, and that the Toto brand in general is held in high esteem among plumbers and cloggers alike. I believe this is because of their G-Max flushing technology.

If you'd prefer to keep your existing toilet, you can simply add a pressurizing device to your tank. In study after study FLUSHMATE® emerges as the clear winner in water-closet performance.

So many choices. Who would have ever thought that the toilet industry was so competitive? Between government regulations and the black market in high-volume-flush toilets, it's an interesting game we're playing here, isn't it? I think my dad is going to scrap the Kohler he has now and try to find a Toto Ultramax. Man, those things are flying off the shelves faster than Tickle-Me Elmo.